Where Ziggy Stardust surveyed a world doomed to end within five years, Diamond Dogs slinks and prowls about the shards of a world that's already ended. The album opens with a descending synthesizer note that quickly braids with another unearthly synthesizer tone to underscore Bowie's nightmarish minute-long spoken intro Future Legend.

In this world of the near future, red mutant eyes gaze down on Hunger City as "...Ten thousand peoploids split into small tribes coveting the highest of the sterile skyscrapers like packs of dogs assaulting the glass fronts of Love Me Avenue, ripping and rewrapping mink and shiny silver fox, now leg warmers..."

Chaotic crowd screams rise to a crescendo as an announcer shouts out, "This ain't rock and roll, this is genocide!, sounding an awful lot like "...this is David Bowie!" In this frenzy the guitar grinds into action, rolling out the thunder of Diamond Dogs with the pun "As they pulled you out of the oxygen tent, you asked for the latest party..." One of Bowie's most intriguing characters, Halloween Jack, swings from the top of Manhattan Chase to street level where restless scavengers and mutants slither about the boulevard, poaching vulnerable "mannikins with kill appeal".

The eerily erotic Sweet Thing/Candidate/Sweet Thing (reprise) follows, sliding in on a rumbling synthesizer fog. This is one of the sexiest songs Bowie's ever done. Baiting bondage and sadomasochism in a hopeless existence, "it's a street with a deal and a taste" where everything is negotiable and the currency is flesh.

Bowie's recurring theme of Cinematic Reality appears as the song segues into Candidate, "My set is amazing, it even smells like a street"...."so you scream out of line, "I want you, I need you. Anyone out there? Any time?" Forget the bulletproof faces for sale on the avenue, give this man an axe to break the ice.

From Sweet Thing/Candidate/Sweet Thing (reprise) naturally follows THE anthem to hazy sexual identity. Diamond Dogs reaches its orgasm at the end of the 13 minute Sweet Thing/Candidate/Sweet Thing reprise. A long buildup peaks, breaks into a flurry of guitars yelping and howling like the diamond dogs, then immediately crunches into the dynamite opening chords of Rebel Rebel. Absolute, irrevocable endorphine ecstacy!

What was originally side two of the album follows the Orwell saga of 1984 faithfully. 1984 the song is the highlight here. A funky wet guitar slaps your eardrums like the echo of bootheels marching in the square, the relentlessly ominous lyrics warning, "Beware the savage jaw of 1984". In what could be a campaign anthem, Big Brother pounds the nails into the coffin to end the story, the ghostly backing vocals contrasting with the lyrics' desperate blind optimism, the politics of forfeiture.

Speaking of Candidate, the original medley and the demo version are very different, both are excellent, so you're not getting any duplication on one CD. The version of Dodo is different from the underproduced Dodo/1984 medley demo on the expensive box set Sound and Vision. So good you wonder why these first rate bonus tracks languished in the vaults for 20 years.

Update: The 2004 reissue is on the streets with eight bonus tracks on a second CD. I finally picked this up when I saw it on sale for $17.79 USD. The packaging and the enclosed booklet are so well done that it makes me want to run out and pick up the 2CD reissues for Aladdin Sane and Ziggy Stardust. This made me a Bowie fan all over again.

The second CD could have been beefed up; eight tracks is a tad thin when the vaults still have live numbers from the TV special The 1980 Floor Show. And refugees from the 1974 tour such as the live Panic In Detroit which still hasn't made its way from vinyl to CD. Or even a DVD of The 1980 Floor Show with the duet with Marianne Faithfull?

Anyway, here's the lowdown: 1984/Dodo is also on the Sound+Vision box set. It's enjoyable but it does sound like a work in progress, as though production were dropped when it was decided to not do 1984 as a medley. Don't let that stop you from enjoying it though.

Dodo also comes as a separate track, fully produced. This and the second version of Candidate were stellar bonus tracks on the Ryko edition of this album back in 1990. If all you have is the original album you'll want these.

The third version of Candidate is a remix of the original album version. I can't tell any difference except that it's excerpted out as a separate track.

The K-Tel edit of Diamond Dogs is very well done. Believe it or not you won't even notice the missing ninety seconds because the edit is taken from the repetitions at the end of the song. This would be my version of choice for Bowie compilation CDs in the car.

The two versions of Rebel Rebel are mostly for collectors. The 1974 US single version is also on the Sound+Vision box set. I've never liked this version, it loses the hard driving rock in favor of some phase-shifted "la-la-la" crap. I could be wrong but it seems that whenever Bowie is insecure he'll go overboard on production. Rebel Rebel didn't need the kitchen sink approach, there was never any risk of this beauty going down the drain.

The 2003 version of Rebel Rebel is on the 2CD edition of Bowie's album Reality and on the soundtrack to Charlie's Angels II. It starts out sounding like Rick Springfield's Jessie's Girl. I never get the itch to hear this version.

Growin' Up was a bonus track on the Ryko edition of Pin Ups. It didn't belong on that album and there's no pleasure in it being here. This is one of a couple Bruce Springsteen songs that Bowie covered back in the day. Bruce Springsteen makes me think of Throwin' Up.

Sidebar rant: Word was going around that Brooose was going to be the next big thing, and sure enough he wound up being a big thing. If you read any of the popular rock rags of the early seventies the critics were begging for exactly what Bruce became. You'd swear he was assembled by his management.

Critics wanted someone like Dylan, but Dylan didn't get loose and Dylan didn't shake his ass. Dylan was moody, unpredictable, remote, poetic and sometimes obscure. Journalists wanted a blue jean Dylan with plain talk who they could invite to a party and challenge to a beer chugging contest.

In contrast to Dylan, Springsteen is a little stevedore; his fans measure their hero by how much he sweats. Taxi driver Ph.D's may discuss Dylan, but lunchbucket laborers identify with Brooose. He's copped the sullen and introspective Dylan act, yet he boogies down with Mitch Ryder tunes. He alternately mumbles or brays his way through one album after another that almost sound like they're saying something. But Bruce is too populist to actually say anything risky. Born to run? Born to run away.

Rolling Stone magazine has been proclaiming Springsteen as rock messiah since the beginning of time but that's just the patter of little feet pimping the corporate gospel. By their very nature any messiah worth his salt winds up getting thrown out of the temple and strung up outside the city gates. Springsteen is the exact opposite: a well-worshipped icon, a grizzled patriarch of the politically correct, and a big can of corn.

Speaking of predictable conformist corn, how about all those embarrassing alt-rock dinosaurs trying to be edgier than the last band they saw on TV? When the revolution comes it won't be sponsored on TV. But that's another rant...

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